Original Klaas slant grip Heer dagger catalogue sheet by Klaas

[gerrit]

I came across this very rare sheet of an army dagger in a advertisments catalogue of Klaas.
This catalogue was used for resellers of Klaas, some sheets cleary show the resellers price and the customers price.

As this is the first large picture of a slant that clearly shows the guard i was very suprised, and wanted to share this one with you.
Very interesting is that this ad shows a slant grip dagger with a crossguard that Klaas himself never used or produced.
Looking at the scabbardbands it also shows the leaves going in the opposite direction: facing to the right!
This advertisement says: army dagger in the prescribed execution, that implied that the army dagger should look like this, made by prescribed regulations.
Looking at the crossguards eagle we see a great resemblance with the initial-first type of crossguard used by Alcoso, SMF, Höller, and the Plumacher - early generic type 2.

Could it be that this picture shows the Original prescribed army dagger by regulations of the German Goverment?
It also shows great resemblance with the Heer dagger that Tiger used in its first advertisement.

Regards
Ger

[stingray]

Ger,good job again.
Here is the Pack army from original catalog, and you can see big difference even in scabbard screws.
They don't care about exact details when they printed those catalogs or they print them before start manufacturing.

[gerrit]

Thx Ivan, but looking at your Pack picture i see a later typ?
What is striking about this Klaas ad is that it has a slant grip, two sidescrews on the scabbard and sure looks a lot like a lot of the first type crossguards used by a lot of Firms.
In that case its appearance did matter!

Could you please take a good close up of the guard and scabbard throat?

thx,
Ger

[stingray]

I will make some pictures later today.
The Pack catalog is from 1937,so that's explain why is late production .
What year is your KLAAS catalog?

[gerrit]

Ivan these sheets are a mix and only a few have a date on them, some are realy early 1935-36-37 but also 1939 sheets are there,

Ger

[stingray]

Ger,this is the best i can do.
The image isn't clear even in the catalog, but you can see that it is not a typical Pack configuration

[Anderson]

Are these images in the catalogues actually photographs or "artists impressions" of what the dagger will look like?

[gerrit]

Thx Ivan, yes its a later type and funny to see the scabbardband leaves pointing to the right also.
Also indeed not a Pack design!

#Anderson i think although Ivan's Pack shows even shadow, that both are artist impressions, as although the Klaas guard looks a lot like the first type of guard Alcos and Axt & Hauer produced it isnt an exact guard, and hasnt been produced.

There will always be differences in design even when you distribute specifications and prototype pictures.
The casting molds have to be designed and produced and all by different artists-craftsmen.

Regards
Ger

Ger

[dr73]

Beautiful example Ger! Looking forward to getting my copy

When it comes to the design of the eagle of an army dagger, here are my 2 cents. I don't think there ever were regulations about how the eagle should look like exactly. There is no way that if there were regulations, there would have been so many different styles of eagles at the start of production. They would all be rejected by the strict German inspectors. Just look at for example the differences between big companies like WKC, Eickhorn or Pack. All of these companies produced army daggers right from the start and these eagles don't even come close to looking the same.

The only regulations I think existed were regulations about dimensions and shape of the dagger. The shape and form of the eagle was up to the artist that worked for a certain company. Also interesting is that the man that originally designed the dagger (Paul Casberg) worked for the Eickhorn firm. Glad he didn't prescribe the Eickhorn eagle as the standard, because collecting army daggers wouldn't have been very much fun

It's interesting to see that the artist impressions of these daggers do not look exactly the same as the real daggers. One could argue that the first catalogues were printed before the first dagger was produced but that doesn't go for the catalogue that Ivan showed. I think the explanation is really simple. Back then nobody really cared how the eagle looked like except for the artists that made the designs

I'm very grateful to these artists by the way because they gave me a very interesting hobby!

Danny